


It Begins

by William_Easley



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Adventure, Birthday, Ciphers, Gravity Falls history, Humor, Mystery, Time Travel, Young Stanley, young Stanford
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:49:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24005380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/William_Easley/pseuds/William_Easley
Summary: I do not own the show GRAVITY FALLS or the characters of the show. These are the property of Alex Hirsch, the creator of the show, and the Walt Disney Company. I don't earn any money by writing these fanfictions, but just write for fun and practice and in the hope that others enjoy reading them.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	It Begins

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own the show GRAVITY FALLS or the characters of the show. These are the property of Alex Hirsch, the creator of the show, and the Walt Disney Company. I don't earn any money by writing these fanfictions, but just write for fun and practice and in the hope that others enjoy reading them.

* * *

**It Begins**

**By William Easley**

* * *

**1: From the Oral Histories by Dipper and Mabel Pines: Voice Recording 1, Summer 2013**

Dipper: OK, we're in the Mystery Shack, and it's, uh, eight P.M. on June 27—

MABEL: And tomorrow we're having a party! (Blows party horn) Everybody say Par-tay! Par-tay! Par-tay! Aw, you're no fun.

DIPPER: Uh, where was I? Thursday, June 27, 2013, and this is recording number one of Stanford and Stanley Pines—

STANLEY: Whoa, whoa, whoa. How come Poindexter gets top billing?

DIPPER: Um—alphabetical order?

STANLEY: Nah, nah, kid. Things like this, you go by birth order. I'm a few minutes younger than Brainiac, so I go first, OK?

MABEL: Let him have this, Dipper. He's been through so much.

DIPPER: Um, sure. OK, so this is recording number one of the Oral History of Stanley and Stanford Pines.

STANLEY: Better. Remind me why we're doing this.

MABEL: It's because we love you guys! And last year we nearly lost you both to—ugh—Bill Cipher. And found out you two little darlings have _so_ many secrets! We want to know all about you!

STANLEY: OK. Gotcha, Sweetie.

DIPPER: All right, first tell us your name and tell us about your birth.

STANLEY: (Clears throat) My name is Stanley Filbrick Pines. The "Filbrick" is after my old man. My brother has the same middle name. We used to think we'd like a sister, and then we'd think, what, "Stella Filbrick Pines?" And we'd go _nahh._

MABEL: Aw! People could have called her "Filly!" Filly Pines! Grauntie Filly! I miss her so much.

DIPPER: Mabel, please. Grunkle Stanley, next tell us about your birth.

STANLEY: Eh, can't help you there, kid. Guess I musta been there, but I don't remember. Tell you what, go ask my brother. He's older.

DIPPER: But you must have heard from your parents—

MABEL: Brobro—memory eraser gun, remember?

STANLEY: Memory gun? What's one of them?

DIPPER: Never mind, never mind.

STANLEY: Seriously, kids, I got like huge blank spots in my memory. They're clearing up gradually, but somehow I lost a bunch of my memories. Don't remember how.

MABEL: Dipper, let's try this: What's the first thing you _do_ remember clearly, Grunkle Stan?

STANLEY: Lessee . . . I had breakfast at Greasy's this morning!

DIPPER: Oh, for—

STANLEY: Blueberry pancakes, a fried egg, and bacon, with the bottomless mug o' coffee. Wish they'd put a bottom in those, my pants always get soaked. That's why I hardly ever wear 'em!

MABEL: Come on, Grunkle Stan! Try hard for me, Mabel, pleeeasse! What's the first thing you remember from when you were a kid?

STANLEY: Ha! Just kiddin', Pumpkin. OK, all seriousness, lemme think. I know. It all started on our birthday in 1966. I think. Yeah, that was the year. June fifteenth, it was. And we turned twelve years old, that's how I'm so sure of the year. That was the day when . . . it all began.

MABEL: This is gonna be good!

DIPPER: Go on, Grunkle Stan! Tell us all about it.

STANLEY: Hmm. OK, but like I say, memory gaps, so you probably wanna make sure this is how it all went down. I mean, check with Ford later on about all this, 'cause I might not be real clear on some details, but here we go.

It started in our family's apartment, which was up above Pines Pawns, the used-goods store our old man operated in the lead-paint district of a little town called Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey. By that time, our big brother Shermy had already cut out a couple-three years before, and him and his wife were livin' in a place off the Barrens Road, so in the apartment it was just me, Ford, and our parents, OK? Anyways, me and Ford shared a room where he took the top bunk and I got the bottom one, 'cause I had the street smarts and he was a nerd. We made a good team. Where was I? Right, our birthday. Now, that morning he woke up extra early, jumped outa bed, fell to the floor, and he says—

* * *

**2: A Very Typical Birthday: June 15, 1966**

"Happy birthday, Stanley! Also, ouch."

"Yeah, you, too, Poindexter!" Stanley said, shoving some View-Master disks, a _Mad Magazine_ (the cover showed Alfred E. Neuman as a big-game hunter who had just failed to bag an orangutan), and a one-wheeled Fast Wheelz race car off his bed and sitting up. "Way to smash the floor, Poindexter! Hurt yourself?"

"No," Stanford said. "I'm used to it. But happy birthday! The big one-two! We're twelve years old!"

"High six! Practically teen-agers! Yay!"

Ford fumbled around on the low chest-of-drawers for his spectacles, found them and donned them. "So how do we celebrate?"

Stanley giggled. "We'll think of something! Let's go!"

"Wait, I have to get dressed."

"Hah!" Stan snorted. "And they say _you're_ the smart one! If you'd be like me, you'd be ready already!" Stanley had slept in his jeans and red-and-white striped tee shirt.

"Clean clothes feel more comfortable to me."

"Ha! You don't fool nobody when you take off your clothes at night to go to bed. Everybody knows you're just gonna put more on when you wake up. Come on, slowpoke! We got a busy day ahead!"

It took Ford a few minutes to rummage around in the bureau and find a clean pair of brown corduroy pants, a clean white tee shirt, and socks. He grabbed his brown jacket, too—it was summer, it was warm, but, as Stanley knew, Ford felt that long sleeves helped him hide his unusual hands.

As Ford sat to pull on and tie his sneakers, Stan climbed up to the top bunk and hung off, holding himself aloft by his bent knees, and watching his brother fussily tie neat bows. "How come when I'm upside-down, you look upside-down?"

Ford stood up, stamping his feet to make sure his shoes were on and secure. "It depends on your point of view," he said.

Stan straightened his legs and let himself fall to the floor, landing on his head. "Whoa!" he said, getting up again and laughing. "That's fun!"

"You're going to get brain damage," Ford warned. "How many fingers do you see?"

"Sixteen! Ha! I don't do math during summer vacation, Stan-nerd!"

Ford rolled his eyes but didn't retort. He pointed to the sci-fi movie poster on the wall next to the night table. "Read the line under 'Martian.'"

"The red meanness from space," Stan said.

"The word in 'menace,' Stanley."

"Meanness, menace, what's the diff? Come on, let's go see what's for breakfast!"

They went into the kitchen/dinette, just across the hall from their room. Both it and their bedroom were in the middle of the long top floor of the pawn shop, and neither had a window—those were in the parlor, up front, and their parents' bedroom, in back. But the kitchen did have a dining table, where Filbrick Pines sat, already wearing the sunglasses he donned every day and kept on until bedtime. He didn't greet them but continued reading the Glass Shard Beach _Gazette_ with his usual sour expression. Mrs. Pines poured him a fresh cup of coffee and looked up with a smile. "Good morning, kids. Happy birthday."

"Birthday," grunted Dad, who was a man of very few words, most of them cynical. "Huh. Says here the Supreme Court orders that crooks gotta be warned of their rights or the police gotta turn 'em loose. I'm not impressed."

"There's cheese blintzes and strawberry sauce on the counter," Mom said. "Pour yourselves some milk."

By their twelfth birthday, both Stanley and Stanford had given up on hoping for any kind of party. The Pines family just didn't do parties. If they were lucky, Dad might let them take an item from the pawn shop, one that had been there so long that there was no hope for a sale or for the original owner to redeem it.

And possibly Mom just might slip them enough money for a movie at the Glass Shard Beach Bijou Duplex. No cake, though, no candles, no balloons, no colorful wrapping paper, no bows, no presents, and certainly no clown.

Still, the twins had each other, and that usually was enough for them. What fun they had was the fun they made themselves. And one other birthday bennie was that on that one special day every summer, the two weren't required to clean the pawn shop. Usually they spent at least a couple of hours each morning helping out in the shop—but once a year they were free all day.

That morning, as soon as they finished eating, Mom slipped a few dollar bills to Stanford and said, "Have fun, boys."

"Thanks, Mom!" Ford exclaimed, pocketing the money. He was normally the treasurer, because his pockets rarely had holes in them. If Stanley put money in his jeans, he tended to shed bills the way an oak drops leaves in the fall.

In the summers, beachcombing was always their go-to activity. Sometimes they even went out before sunrise—usually that was Stanford's doing, because Stanley liked to sleep a little later. Invariably, Ford kept track of the tides, and after a storm or an unusually high tide, they liked to go search for treasures.

The ebbing sea would reveal all sorts of, well, you couldn't normally call them "treasures," but at least the kind of washed-up interesting detritus that kids like them loved to find. They already had in their room a collection of colorful glass fishnet floats that they had retrieved on such expeditions. Also a whole assortment of coins—"Pirate booty!" Stan exclaimed every time they took it out of the cigar box to count it. "Heh-heh! 'Booty,' get it?"

The chance that the coins actually had ever been in the hold of a pirate ship was . . . unlikely. The oldest coin they had ever discovered was a worn 1909 Indian-head penny, and the most exotic ones were a 1939 British George VI shilling and some kind of Asian coin that had a hole in the center and appeared to be brass. Other than that, the largest denomination coin was a 1924 U.S. silver dollar, and the rest were fifty-cent pieces, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. Most of them were probably coins lost by beach-goers and were nothing special.

However, Stanley thought that maybe the penny, the British coin, and the holey Asian one might be valuable. Stanford had tried looking them up, but unfortunately the library didn't have any coin-reference books. An easy way to evaluate them would have been to take them to Dad. Trouble was, Dad would keep anything of significant value, so the Pines twins kept their stash in the cigar box.

They had discovered other treasures, for a kid's definition of "treasure." For example, they owned a huge shark hook, all rusty with age and dull of point, and a paper cupful of colorful, rounded sea glass—"Gems!" Ford had exclaimed.

"Heck with that—they're ours!" Stan had returned. "Let Jim find his own!"

On a closet shelf they'd lined up a row of old bottles—four of them, because they wouldn't take unbroken ones. One was a beer bottle of recent vintage, one was some kind of pale-green crockery bottle, encrusted with barnacles and clogged with sand as solid as it was, another was an antique of some kind, deep green, perhaps corked—the mouth was covered by a round clump of sea shells—and a square bottle that read "RUM" in a very old-fashioned style, which Stan was almost sure had fallen off a pirate ship.

Anyway, on any given day of beachcombing, they never knew what they might discover. Ford asked, "Pop, may I look at the weather page of the paper?"

"You want to know the weather, stick your head out the window," Filbrick muttered, but he grudgingly handed that section over.

Ford adjusted his spectacles. "Let's see. Low tide . . . and the ebb turns this afternoon just before . . . three P.M. Want to catch a matinee movie first?"

"What's playing?"

Ford looked on the back of the page for the theater listings. "Um . . . _A Kiss Before Dying._ "

"Yuck. Mushy stuff. What's on the other screen?"

" _The Terror of Mothgar._ We can see the one o'clock show and then hit the beach for low tide!"

"We got enough for a couple hot dogs at Carney's?"

"And for popcorn and sodas."

"Cool! Let's go—a monster movie and then a monster treasure hunt!"

They both chanted "Pines! Pines! Pines!" as they hustled down the stairs.

The phone rang—Mom's separate psychic line. As she reached to pick it up, she said, "Fil, you oughta be a little nicer to the boys on their birthday."

"Eh," he said, pouring a cup of coffee to take downstairs as he opened the shop, "they're knuckleheads."

* * *

**3: Man with a Mission**

Meet a man out of time.

He was young. He was idealistic. He was trim and fairly muscular. He had a beautiful head of hair. He wore thick round glasses.

And after a year of training, this was his first real day on the job.

He wanted not only to do well, but to do good.

At that point in time (to be specific, the year 3019 in the common calendar, but that doesn't matter), Time Baby still conversed mainly in gurgles, goos, belches, and farts, but the RoboMaTranslatorMatic hovered nearby and accurately translated these into understandable language.

Well, accuracy was what they all assumed. There was no real way to ask Time Baby directly. Well, there was, but then the answer had to come back through the RoboMaTranslatorMatic, so people still felt doubt. Well, maybe they didn't, maybe they did, but no one ever admitted to doubting Time Baby. Well, one did once, but what happened to him was so horrible that nobody else did. Ever.

The robotic translator said, "Cadet Anomaly Corrector 2-12-5-14-4-9-14/2-12-5-14-10-1-13-9-14/2-12-1-14-4-9-14, the Dimensional, Planetographic, and Time co-ordinates have been entered into and locked in your TT 0001 Mark 1 Universal Transporter. Do you understand the operation of this device?"

"Y-y-ye-ye-oh, sure," he said. "It's, it's, it's a time-tape. S-sorry, I'm a l-little ner-nervous. First, first day on the job."

The robot heaved an extremely robotic sigh. "Your TT 0001 Mark 1 Universal Transporter works the same way as the Mark 5 Time Tape you trained on, except the Mark 1 has a limited setting and limited capability. It transports you from Here and Now to There and Then and afterward, we hope, returns you."

"S-s-safely," he corrected.

"If you say so. Now, your goal is twofold: First phase: Make certain that the two young people—" the voice suddenly flatted out, as though AutoTuned—"Pines, Stanford Filbrick and Pines, Stanley Filbrick—" then back to normal—"find this artifact. A review of the time-line indicates that on the day of your arrival, they either will or will not explore a small cavern called locally—" AutoTune again—"Sea Plunderers' Cave / Pirates' Pothole / Buccaneers' Grotto / Smugglers' Hideaway, delete those that are incorrect—" normal again—"so place the artifact where they will be certain to find it. Suggestion: They are interested in boats. Place the artifact on a small boat you will find inside the cavern. Fine-tuning of the time target is not possible. If you arrive too early / too late, then improvise. Failure is not an option. Well, it is, but not succeeding is fatal. Any questions? Respond."

"Y-y-y-y—"

"Good. Off you go."

The time traveler vanished into the Then and There. Time Baby said, "Wah gebble muk." And farted.

"No thank you," the robot said. "No bet. If he returns at all, which this unit doubts, there is a ninety-two percent chance he will report failure. Now it is time for comforting you. Who's ee bess widdle baby in ee ole ide world? Oo is, ess oo is!"

"Braap mwah woo!"

"Sorry, sir, I cannot do as you request. I lack the necessary reproductive organ and orifice."

* * *

The time traveler might have wondered why interfering in the daily routine of two kids was even a job for his organization. He had studied the theory of time and causality, as well as the intrinsic chaos built into any historical process.

OK, so the moving finger writes and having writ, moves on. Until a time traveler comes along and redlines a few words and adds different ones. You've heard of the butterfly effect. Go back in history, kill a random butterfly, return to the present, and things have gone to hell.

Unless the butterfly is an evil butterfly, and then sometimes the present is improved if the insect hit-job is carried out. It varies.

Sometimes moving one little pebble either causes or prevents a landslide. One of the Pines boys was a pebble. At least one. The other, not so much. And even Time Baby couldn't be absolutely certain which boy was the crucial one. Always in motion the past is.

Meddling in the past is a fiddly business. One little mistake can create a stable time loop, an instable time loop, or even branch off a whole new time line. The time traveler's first assignment was not considered a crucial one, but was at least one of some significance. One of the Pines Twins was fated to mess around with dimensional travel. One could potentially have a wonderful life. These were not the same individual.

Whatever. The Future had created an artifact that contained a message that would be meaningless to one twin but had a good chance of warning the other twin about the potential dangers of creating a portal to other dimensions. At that early stage of their lives, the small change might make a world of difference. Literally.

The most important question was whether Time Baby would destroy civilization or not. Flip the coin one way, everything would come to a screeching halt in 3012 and be re-created as a dystopia controlled by a despotic version of Time Baby. If it landed on the other face, Time Baby would suck up the indignity he had suffered, create the Time Paradox Avoidance and Enforcement Squad, and would work (albeit grumpily) to assist humanity.

The time traveler had come from the second eventuality. His job might, or might not, avoid the first one. Or possibly might do nothing at all.

Anyway, it simultaneously was and wasn't worth a shot.

* * *

At that point in the time traveler's life—not long after Time Baby awakened from an unwanted thousand-year-nap, and was he ever grumpy about it—the time-tape measures were not nearly as elegant and precise as they would be in, oh, say the year 207̃012, when as a rule the travelers arrived almost every time in one, or at most, two pieces and more or less alive. The 3019 version of the device was trickier, and after all, this was the time traveler's first actual trip, as opposed to his runs in the simulator.

He was unprepared for his hair bursting into flame, but fortunately, he materialized at night, close to the ocean, and, thinking quickly, he ran into the surf and did a handstand. Then, a little dazed and a lot wet, he sloshed out and looked around.

His belt communicator, which offered ultra-tachyonic communication between Present and Future, across the nearest dozen adjoining dimensions and operated universally, except in a few places that had rotten reception, buzzed out in an annoying artificial voice, "Cadet Anomaly Corrector 2-12-5-14-4-9-14/2-12-5-14-10-1-13-9-14/2-12-1-14-4-9-14, indicate whether you have arrived and if so, whether you are alive or dead. Respond."

"I, I, I, think th-th-this is wh-where I'm s-supposed to be. It, it's very d-dark. Th-there's an ocean."

A pause, and then the voice droned, "You have hit your geographic target but missed your time-objective. You have arrived at 200 A.M. local time, when it should have been 200 P.M. Hold. Or 0200 when you should have arrived at 1400. Adapt and use this extra time. You are to locate the cave, hideaway, grotto, hole in the ground, or whatever it is. It should be within fifty meters of you and . . . above water at the current tidal stage. Venture into it. If our reading is correct, it should contain the wreckage of a boat. That will be an ideal vehicle in which to place the artifact. Respond."

"Uh—"

"Good. You are authorized to ask locals for help, providing you adopt a suitable disguise. Do not let anyone know you are a time-traveler under severe penalty of tantrum. Camouflage yourself and observe. Then mingle with the local human targets, the Pines twins. Blend in."

"Y-yes, wh-what?"

"Do not interrupt. Respond."

"O-o-okay. Um, what?"

"What?"

"You-you c-called me."

"Affirmative."

"I m-mean just n-now. You-you j-just s-said 'Blendin.'"

"Affirmative. Do it."

"Do wh-wh-what?"

"Blend in. Respond."

"I _am_ re-re-responding! Geeze, this-this is w-worse than t-talking to my Gr-grandpa!"

"Just do it!"

"Que-que-question! M-may I r-r-rest? I f-f-feel exhausted."

"Calculating. You may rest until local sunrise. Respond."

"Th-th-thank you."

The time traveler waited, but no one responded. Even in June, with a local temperature that should have been in the high sixties. the beach was cold, a stiff offshore breeze sweeping over it. His wet clothes didn't help.

He trudged up and down the sand, occasionally flicking on his belt light to get his bearings, and then spotted what had to be the triangular opening to the grotto. He ducked into it, turned on his light, and soon discovered the wreck of a wooden sloop. It was a small craft, maybe fifteen feet from stern to broken bows. Had it been complete, it might have measured eighteen feet. However, it did have a cabin, and the cabin looked relatively undamaged.

"Your-your-your-eureka!" he said. He took the artifact from his time-backpack and found a place just inside the cabin in which to hide it. He packed some sand around it, as if it had collected there with the ebb and flow of tides. There was enough sticking out to attract any kid's notice. Perfect.

Then he headed back out, but paused at the cave mouth, considering. If for some reason his time-tape measure failed, or if something happened to him, how would he let Headquarters know he had done his part? At that point, the early-model communicator belts could receive and return transmissions, but they could not originate them. HQ could call him, but he could not call them. Hmm. Leave a note, he thought.

He rummaged around and found a pile of driftwood, much of it planking. He selected several boards and dragged them to the mouth of the cave. His backpack had an assortment of handy tools, and from it he removed a hammer. He had to ransack the driftwood to find and remove enough nails, none of a size and all to a greater or lesser degree rusty, but they'd have to do.

Using the hammer, he nailed the boards up to block the entrance to the cavern. Then he took out a black marker and carefully wrote on the top board "Blendin Was Here." He walked away, stopped to gaze at the message, and then walked back.

"B-b-better add s-some m-more scribbles," he said. "M-make it l-look like random g-g-graffiti." Quickly and in different colors, he added more messages: _Rock Greasers._ Or should it be Greasers Rock? He couldn't remember how it should go. Too late, he'd already scrawled it.

Let's see, names from the twentieth century. Tommy, yeah, in red. A heart symbol, lover's names, Romeo and Juliet! Too long. OK, R + J, except he messed up and the J looked like an S. Screw it, it could be, uh, Romeo and Shmuliet. N.Y. um, Boys. Nice ring. He added a few more before printing on the next-to-bottom plank a dire warning: _DO NOT ENTER._

According to his training, that warning notice forbidding entrance should suggest to twelve-year-old kids, "Come on in and help yourself."

It was past three A.M. local time. Yawning, Blendin slogged up the beach, searching for shelter. What he found . . . wasn't much. A boat-rental place had five or six rowboats pulled up on the shore, plus one sailboat. With a little cabin. That was unlocked. And inside, a cot and a blanket. It was cozy, fairly warm, and dry. That would do. Yawning even more deeply, he stretched out on the cot, closed his eyes and almost immediately began to dream.

Funny thing about dreams.

They exist in the Mindscape, which every dreamer, to a degree, constructs. However, under the right conditions, dreamers sometimes could sort of communicate.

Oh, and one more interesting fact about dreams:

They exist in a state of absolute timelessness.

Sleepers could dream themselves to the beginning of time or to the distant future. It was all the same to the Mindscape. Dreamers lived in elastic time, stretchable time, unlimited time. Or, to put it another way—

Absolute.

Timelessness.

* * *

**4: Well, Well, Well**

_"Hi, there, stranger! What brings you to these parts?"  
_

Blendin stood in front of a suburban house. He knew it. He had grown up in it. But one day he had just had it with his dysfunctional family and with his brilliant, crazy grandfather, and he had stolen a portal gun, fired it up at random, not choosing any destination, and had stepped through the portal and found himself not in a different dimension, but in a different time.

Damn it.

However, some uniformed guys had grabbed him and when he instantly gave up, they asked him how he'd got then. That required some clarification, but when they learned he'd traveled not by tape but by portal, they had offered him a chance: Sign on as a time cop (that's how they'd explained it) or don't. They could always eliminate him if he didn't. They confiscated the portal gun, and since that time he had never seen it again.

So—he'd signed on. Finished the mandatory schooling and then done the training course. Learned that the pay was lousy, but the time benefits were fantastic. For one thing, he wouldn't grow old and die. Oh, he'd age very, very slowly, but if he got to retirement age and still had the drive to stay on the job, he could recycle back to youth, de-aging instead of aging, stop at any point, and start all over again. Indefinitely.

"The drawback," his mentor told him, "is that it's incredibly boring."

He considered being bored. He compared the prospect to his life so far—"B-b-boring is g-good," he'd said.

So here he was, asleep in the timeless now of the Mindscape and knowing it, in that lucid-dreaming state that sometimes pleased and sometimes terrified him, and someone was talking to him in the driveway of his family's house from a thousand years ago.

"Who are you?" he asked.

The voice came from thin air. Or maybe thick air, it's hard to tell with air: "Just a pal, pal. So you work for the big baby, huh?"

Panicked, Blendin warned, "D-d-don't c-call h-him that! You'll m-make him m-mad!"

"Let me guess. This is your first assignment, am I right? Of course I'm right! Well, maybe not right, but at least isosceles, to truth the tell. Oh, oh, and physically you're in Glass Shard Beach New Jersey, U.S.A., Earth, Dimension Forty-Six Apostrophe Backslash. Chronologically, it's Wednesday, June fifteenth, nineteen hundred and fifty-six. Wait, I'm off a day. No. Year? Decade, huh? Nineteen hundred and _sixty_ six! That's interesting. In-ter-resting!"

Was the TPAES checking up on him? Had he failed somehow? Would he have failed? Yikes. "That, that's class-classified information! How, how d-do you even k-know th-that?"

The voice came back full of confidence: "Oh, I know lots of things _. Lots_ of things. Like I know the name Stanford Pines. Would you by any chance be here to _arrange_ something for him?"

Blendin gulped. "I ca-ca-ca, I'm not supposed to tell you that. But yes. Yes, I am."

"I noticed there's a cave nearby. He's supposed to go in there, right? Come on, buddy, you can tell me! I might be able to help you out. You're supposed to make sure he goes into the cave, right?"

"May-may-maybe."

The invisible presence mused. "Hmm. You want to get him to go inside the cave. He'll need directions. Do I miss my guess, or are you hanging around to lead him on?"

"Poss-poss-possibly."

"No offense, friend, but you're not dressed for the occasion. You'll arouse his suspicions in that suspicious get-up, I suspect. Got a disguise?"

What the heck. Blendin was persuading himself that it didn't matter. Not if this was only a dream. "The s-s-suit does th-that. Pro-projects a holographic disguise."

"Great. Great. In that case, I can guarantee he'll find what you want him to find. Happy to lend a hand. Is it a deal?"

That aroused certain misgivings. "What-what do you w-want in exchange?"

"I got a little token I'd like him to have. Priming the pump for later, you might say. It's nothing dangerous. Something every kid would love to find. Pirate gold! Well, one coin. Come on, buddy, he finds your bottle in a boat—you do know it's usually the other way round, right?—and he also finds my shiny token. That's it. Deal?"

"I, I, I, uh. OK."

"Shake."

Blendin woke immediately, his right hand tingling. Huh. He was alone. And brightening dawn leaked through the boat's porthole. Time to get out, before the boat-rental guy showed up—huh.

It had been a dream. He knew that. Yet in his hand was a gold coin, in size between a twentieth-century USA quarter and half-dollar, very shiny. An Eye of Providence triangle embossed on one side, on the other a nonsensical inscription:

**VI** **er,**

**YM AS**

**QVGB**

**PNEZP**

And somehow, though the invisible stranger had not even spoken of it, he knew just how to use the coin to lure the kids to the cave.

The sun was shining over the sea. Time to get moving.

Outside the boat, Blendin adjusted his disguise belt until he looked like an aged sailor, white hair and beard, blue shirt, bell-bottomed denim blue jeans, boat shoes, blue tattoos on the backs of his hands: a sailing ship on one, an anchor on the other.

Arrh, matey.

The wharf down the beach was waking up, people stirring, a small boat already shoving off. He could smell cooking.

So the time traveler sorted through his backpack for currency from the correct era, found some, and then he ambled down the beach to get breakfast and to wait for Headquarters to call him and send him to wherever he would meet Stanford and, what was the other one's name? Stanley. Stanford and Stanley Pines.

* * *

**5: Hide the Candles!**

With a couple of hot dogs, a few greasy fries, and two sodaps brewing in their bellies, Stanley and Stanford had made their way to the Bijou Duplex and had bought a big box of popcorn and two large colas. They stood waiting for the round clock over Theater 2 to snick the minute hand to one P.M. so they could go in and find the best seats for the Richard Goreman horror epic _Terror of Mothgar._

Lobby cards and posters suggested the outline of the story: the gigantic toothy monster called Mothgar (Head of a Moth! Wings of a Moth! TEETH OF A TERROR!) would somehow rise from the dead—he had been killed again the year before, going down in flames at the climax of his last movie—and terrorize a beach town.

The photos suggested that the majority of the town's population comprised a bevy of attractive teen girls who wore quite brief bikinis and whose sole occupations seemed to be joy-riding in convertibles, flirting with guys who looked as though they knew everything about surfing and nothing about everything else.

The monster's face—already familiar from _Mothgar!_ and its previous three sequels—was the feature of the biggest lobby poster. When one o'clock arrived, the throng of people who'd gone to see the movie—all ten of them—exited. Ford and Stan hurried into the auditorium and scored primo seats, center of the fourth row back from the screen.

About a dozen other kids came in eventually, as the twenty minutes of previews played out. And then the trombone fanfare of WottaMovie Studios sounded the call to adventure. Ah, Richard Goreman, king of the cheap-horror genre, and his WottaMovies! You knew you were in safe, if clumsy, hands with a Goreman picture!

The title flashed up in red letters that immediately began to drip streaks of blood. Or ketchup, in a Goreman movie they were often one and the same. The film began, and the monster moth soon enough rampaged on the screen, terrorizing Beachtown, America. For Stan the high point was when the cranky old guy who, fifteen minutes into the movie, was the only character who had seen Mothgar clearly. He ranted and dashed on foot all through the streets, stopping cars, pounding on the hoods and screaming, "Hide the candles! Hide all the candles! For God's sake, hide the candles!"

Stan shot cola through his nose laughing at the scene. And from then on, Stan would break into the movie at apropos moments, screeking in a creakity imitation of the old-timer's voice.

Judy: Jeepers, Timmy! I don't know that you and I should park in your convertible at the loneliest part of Lover's Lane when some mysterious killer's around. What are you planning to do?

And Stan would screech out, "Hide the candle! Hide the candle!"

Before long every kid in the place had joined him. An usher actually came down the aisle and clicked on his flashlight.

"Hide the candle!" they all yelled at him.

"Aw, crap, I give up," he said, retreating.

Judy and Timmy, naturally, got snatched right out of the convertible and probably eaten by Mothgar. As did four other couples. And then Chip the high-school geek came up with the only possible way of dealing with a giant carnivorous poison-spitting moth:

Chip: It's a crazy idea, but how about this, guys? We can go light up the old abandoned lighthouse just like a candle!

Biff: OK, Four-Eyes, but when it comes to the lighthouse, what do we do? Sing 'Happy Birthday' and have cake?

Goober: Duh, guys, my dad has this flame-thrower that he brunged back home from Korea as a souvenir. We could, um, we could—what was I talkin' about?

Chip: Criminey, guys! If that flame-thrower still works—it just might take care of our big old bug problem!

And needless to say, the flame-thrower worked, the moth was drawn to the flame, its wings burst into blazes, and except for starting a fire that probably destroyed a quarter of the town, the plan worked perfectly. The surviving nice couple embraced, she asked, "Is it all over?" and the guy said, "Until next time, Milly. Until next time."

And . . . THE END?

* * *

"What did you think?" Stan asked as the twins left the theater.

"Well, it was entertaining as a fantasy," Ford said. "But of course a moth couldn't grow that big."

"Huh?" Stan asked. "Dinosaurs flew, some of 'em, and they were probably bigger than Mothgar."

"No, I looked it up after we saw _Revenge of Mothgar_. It's a question of mass to size ratio," Ford said. "There's this thing called the inverse-cube law."

In a monotone, Stanley said, "Beepity boppity, I am a nerdbot. I can't enjoy a horror movie 'cause I gotta look up the reversed-cubic law. That's you. That's how you sound."

Ford giggled. "You got me! Anyhow, it was an OK movie."

"Yeah, right. Hey, is it low tide?"

Checking his watch, Ford said, "Nearly. It's ebbing. Let's hit the beach!"

They walked the three blocks to the waterfront, went down the slope to the beach beside the fishing wharf, and then strolled southwards. Hardly anyone was on the beach at that hour. For one thing, low tide made the exposed sand smell a good deal like herring past its sell-by date, and for another, a better, sandier beach with not as much broken glass was just around on the far side of the point.

They picked up a few random things—a probable shark tooth, the broken neck of a beer bottle (they tossed that back), a silver coin that when dug out of the sand proved to be a bottle cap, junk like that. Except for the tooth, which might turn out to be a broken shell or a fragment of pottery, nothing much worth taking home.

They removed their sneakers, stuffed their socks into them, tied the laces together to sling shoes and socks around their necks, and waded on the edge of the waves. "Crummy haul," Stanley complained.

"Yes. Generally it's better to come at low tide after a storm. The bigger waves stir up the bottom and a lot of flotsam and jetsam gets washed ashore."

"I know what a jet is," Stan said. "So what's a flot?"

"Well," Ford said seriously, "flotsam is stuff that washes off a ship or floats from a sinking one. It stays at the surface for a good long time. Jetsam is the stuff that sailors throw overboard to lighten a ship's load when it's in danger of capsizing or sinking, and most of the time it sinks to the bottom."

Stanley faked a bored yawn. "Yeah, and giant moths can't fly."

Ford stared at his brother. "The concepts are not related," he said.

From behind them, someone called, "H-hey, k-kids! You g-guys treasure-huntin'?"

They spun around, surprised. Standing about thirty steps behind them was a scrawny, gray-bearded old guy in scuffed boat shoes, faded jeans, bell-bottom glasses, and a salt-bleached blue work shirt. He cackled. "B-blow me down! I, I, I, I'm not a gh-ghost, ya know, mateys. Arrh."

"I think he's crazy," Stanford whispered.

His brother, though, called out, "Yeah. We're lookin', but pickin's are slim today. And it's our birthday!"

"Oh, are, are you t-two t-twins?"

"We're the Pines Twins!" Stanley said. "Ask anybody! Stanley and Stanford, that's us!"

Ford didn't speak, but simply nodded.

"I, I, I've done my sh-share of b-beach-combing," the old guy said "My n-n-name's Sh-sh-sharkey. I'm an old s-s-sailor, I am. Arhh. Uh, did you s-s-say it's your b-birthday?"

"Aye, aye, Captain!' Stanley said, saluting him.

The old man chuckled. "Well, now, s-s-sonny, I g-g-guess you t-t-two d-deserve this m-more than I d-do. I f-f-found this in the s-sand d-d-down yonder by the b-bluff, s-see? I r-r-reckon it might b-be fuh-from a p-pirate's treasure. There m-may be more hidden away down yonder. Here ya go, Stanford. Catch!"

He flipped a coin toward them, and Stanly made an overhand catch. "Cool! We can keep this?"

"Aye, l-lad. I-I-I gotta sh-shove off, 'cause my sh-ship is d-due to pu-put to sea. G-g-good luck!" He saluted them and then sauntered off, humming off-key and dancing an awkward hornpipe as he did so.

"Look at this, Ford!" Stan said. "It's gold!"

"It might be," Ford said turning the coin over and over. "I wonder where it comes from?"

"Must be Egypt," Stan said, pointing. "That's a pyramid, ain't it?"

"It looks sort of like the Great Seal of the United States," Ford said.

"Nah, a seal looks more like a walrus. Remember in the circus they had that one that played 'Yankee Doodle' on bicycle horns? This is definitely a pyramid. And there's Egyptian writing on the back, too."

"No, these are Roman letters," Ford said. "I don't know what language."

Stan read the inscription letter by letter: " _VIer, YM AS QVGB PNEZP._ Maybe it's Chinese. This last word is nearly PINES, though. Must be meant for us. When we get it home, it goes in the box. Dad would grab this if we let him see it. C'mon, let's go over that way and search for more."

They walked over the sand, eyes intent on the ground, but they caught no glint of gold. Then Stanley stopped, and Ford, behind him, bumped against him. "Hey!"

"Hey, Ford, you got your flashlight on you?"

Stanford reached into his jacket and produced it. "Right here, but why do we need it?"

"Because I think I see a pirate cave. Look down the beach, the rocks there next to the No Trespassing sign. Ain't that a boarded-up cave?"

"It could be," Ford said.

Stanley raced ahead. Ford, struggling as they left the damp sand and hit a loose patch, laughingly yelled, "Wait up!"

Stan said, "Yeah, you should keep up!"

"I can keep up!"

Ignoring an "Area Closed" sign, the boys reached the boarded-up triangular opening.

Ford tried to peer through the cracks between a couple of the boards. "Whoa!"

"Neat-o!" Stanley said.

Ford couldn't see much except darkness, but he exclaimed, "A mysterious, boarded-up cave! It might be filled with lost prehistoric life forms! Or Mesoamerican gold!"

* * *

Far up the beach, Blendin watched the boys through a sleek pair of time-binoculars. One of the two—Stanford, he was pretty sure, the one who'd caught the coin—punched the boards, breaking them. Yeah. Had to be Stanford.

His time-communicator buzzed. "Headquarters to Cadet Anomaly Corrector 2-12-5-14-4-9-14/2-12-5-14-10-1-13-9-14/2-12-1-14-4-9-14, indicate whether you have completed your mission. Respond."

"C-Cadet Anomaly C-Corrector—Oh, sh-shoot, I-I-I have completed the mi-mission. Re-repeat, I have completed th-the mission. I just s-saw S-Stanford Pines enter the ca-cave."

"Acceptable. Stand by for return. Oh, by the way, your hair might catch fire."

"Th-th-thanks for wa-warning me!'

Then suddenly, like an errant lemon seed at the bottom of the glass that the straw comes too close to, Blendin was sucked out of then and there to the here and now of the future.

And his hair did, indeed, catch fire.

* * *

"Well, well, well," said Bill Cipher to Eight-Ball. "The mouse has taken the bait!"

"Huh?" Eight-Ball was one of Bill's more bearable henchmaniacs, but he was about as sharp as a pancake. "What's that mean?"

Bill's eye took on an irritated expression, "Ever since I missed out on making Ben Franklin my puppet—nearly had him, too, but I swear the guy had an almost feminine intuition and got away from me—I've been looking for a human whom I can manipulate. We've figured out how to breach the walls between dimensions. All we need is a portal!"

"Oh. Where can we get one?" Eight-Ball asked. "Are they good to eat?"

"No, my old fiend, they must be built. And not in the Nightmare Realm or in the Mindscape, but in a physical universe! I can do only so much from this side—like use a little bit of myself to make a golden token and shove it through to the Earth, Dimension 46*\ version. That took almost all the energy that even I had! I'll have to rest for maybe twenty Earth years before I can pull _that_ trick again. But it's worth it. It's like a seed."

"Great!" Eight-Ball said. "Uh, what's a seed?"

"Are you for real, or just a device to allow me to sneak in exposition?" Bill asked. "Never mind, never mind. Stanford Pines has just the right type of mentality—brilliant but naïve. My image on that coin will gradually enter his consciousness. Eventually he'll doodle it on his homework. On his notes. And when he works out a tough equation, he'll think it somehow helps him think."

"You think?"

"I am, aren't I? Of course I do! _Sum, ergo cogito._ Now, I do have a point—"

"Three of them," Eight-Ball observed shrewdly.

"Thank you, Mr. Literal. The goal is to have my image in his consciousness so strongly that eventually he'll find it along with one of the incantations that can allow me to appear to him in dreams. And once I'm in his dreams, I'm in his mind! And once I have his mind, then the sky's the limit! And I'll rip it open and we can finally escape the Nightmare Realm! Ah-ha-ha-hah! And then—"

"We'll get weird!" Eight-Ball yelled.

"You have a really puny mind," Bill told him.

"I try, Boss," Eight-Ball said modestly. "I try."

* * *

And back in the cave, the two brothers found a cracked-up sloop. Dreaming of days to come, days of glory, of sailing the seas and finding adventure and treasure, they hauled it out of the cave before the tide rose high enough to flood it.

" _The Zephyr!_ " Ford suggested. "That's a great ship's name!"

" _Blood 'N Guts!"_ Stan countered.

"Too metabolic. Um . . . she'll be our research vessel for investigating mysteries. _The Athena!_ Athena was the goddess of knowledge!"

"Nah, reminds me of Mr. Astopopolus's restaurant. Too Greek. Uh, let's see . . . _The Jolly Roger._ "

"Too pirate-y. Hey, I don't want to fight over it. But it's a research vessel, not a man o' war."

"Let's fight over it!" Stan yelled, punching his brother's shoulder.

"Ow! Hey, don't, I'm sunburned."

"Wait," Stan said. "What did you just say?"

"I'm sunburned?"

"Before that. It's a research vessel, not a—what?"

"Man o' war. It's a warship, like a frigate—"

"Hah! _You_ frigate!"

Ford chuckled weakly. "OK, walked into that one. I mean a warship, oh, like a destroyer, then! Or I think it was also the name of a famous race horse."

"Bingo! I got it, Poindexter!" Stanley put his arm around Ford's shoulder, making him wince. He was indeed sunburned. Stan held his free hand way out, as if gesturing toward the Future. "Listen to this—the _Stan o' War_!"

"The _Stan o' War_ ," Ford repeated softly. Somehow the name tasted like glory on his tongue. "Brilliant, Stanley!"

"Yay! Once we get her patched up and sea-worthy, we'll be kings of the sea!"

"Kings of New Jersey!" Ford said.

And chanting, "Kings of New Jersey! Kings of New Jersey!" they hauled their find to a sheltered place, having at that time not even found the crucial hidden artifact inside the cabin, but happy with what their birthday had brought and confident that nothing and no one ever would—ever could—come between them.

* * *

The End


End file.
